Overview: The New Microfinance Handbook

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The original Microfinance Handbook provided a very useful guide for practitioners and students of development finance. Since that book was published in 1998, there have been concentrated efforts to broaden outreach of financial services to poor households and microenterprises. The New Microfinance Handbook takes a market systems approach to financial inclusion, oriented by client needs. Framing the book with the client as the central element recognizes the emerging awareness that the financial service needs of poor people, like those not so poor, are many. Increasing financial inclusion requires a multitude of market actors working together to make the system work better for the poor. The New Microfinance Handbook brings together leading industry thinkers and organizes their ideas into a concise reference for all development finance stakeholders. The book methodically outlines all the considerations for increasing financial inclusion, with a particular focus on understanding the needs of poor households.
Download the full book at https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/12272

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Overview: The New Microfinance Handbook

Uploaded by

Description:

The original Microfinance Handbook provided a very useful guide for practitioners and students of development finance. Since that book was published in 1998, there have been concentrated efforts to broaden outreach of financial services to poor households and microenterprises. The New Microfinance Handbook takes a market systems approach to financial inclusion, oriented by client needs. Framing the book with the client as the central element recognizes the emerging awareness that the financial service needs of poor people, like those not so poor, are many. Increasing financial inclusion requires a multitude of market actors working together to make the system work better for the poor. The New Microfinance Handbook brings together leading industry thinkers and organizes their ideas into a concise reference for all development finance stakeholders. The book methodically outlines all the considerations for increasing financial inclusion, with a particular focus on understanding the needs of poor households.
Download the full book at https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/12272

OVERVIEW

A Financial Market System Perspective

On micronance and The New Micronance Handbook Financial services help to smooth cash ows, build assets, invest productively, and, importantly, manage risks. Increasing the outreach of nancial services that are affordable and meet the varied needs of poor women and men can contribute signicantly to economic development and overall quality of life, key objectives of practitioners and policy makers alike. Maria Otero, former CEO, Accion International The journey from micronance to nancial inclusion began in earnest when we understood that clients need diverse services such as savings, payments, and insurance, as well as loans. The New Micronance Handbook reects a lesson we learned many years agothat sharing knowledge and best practices is so important to help providers, policy makers, and others to continue to innovate, adapt, and scale nancial services in order to add real value to customers in a responsible way. H.R.H. Princess Mxima of the Netherlands, The UN Secretary-Generals Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA) The New Micronance Handbook lls a critical gap in the current literature on nancial inclusion. I am particularly pleased with the explicit focus on consumers and their needsthis, together with the onset of technology-based delivery models, has been the most important shift in the micronance eld over the past 15 years. I am sure that by taking the nancial ecosystem approach and compiling all the current trends into one volume, this book will serve as a reference for the large and growing nancial inclusion community for years to come. Brigit Helms, author of Access for All Financial services that support asset building, investment, and risk management are critical for people of all ages in frontier and postconict environments. In The New Micronance Handbook, the authors highlight the importance of understanding client needs and the need for a more inclusive nancial sector. This work provides an excellent resource for navigating a diverse and rapidly changing micronance sector. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia Poor peoples lives are complex; the goods, services and amenities that they need to escape from povertyand the means by which they get themare equally diverse. One-size-ts-all solutions are an illusion. Our challenge as development policy makers, researchers, and practitioners in all eldsbe that in nance, agriculture, health or educationis to understand and respond to this complexity in ways that help build diverse, resilient socioeconomic systems that are able to serve the needs of the poor, sustainably and at scale. The New Micronance Handbook reects this challenge. It moves beyond the original Micronance Handbooks focus on retail micronance to deal with the imperative of understanding and strengthening the wider nancial ecosystem, which is essential to making nancial markets genuinely work betterinclusively and responsiblyfor poor men and women. This shift has signicant implications for development agencies, requiring smarter subsidies, different types of partners, and more facilitative or catalytic interventions. Robert Hitchens, Director, Springeld Centre, United Kingdom

This Overview booklet contains the foreword, preface, introduction, and the table of contents from the forthcoming book, The NewMicronance Handbook: A Financial Market System Perspective (doi:10.1596/978-0-8213-8927-0). To order copies of the full-length book, published by the World Bank, please use the form at the back of this booklet. 2013 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank 1818 H Street NW, Washington DC 20433 Telephone: 202-473-1000; Internet: www.worldbank.org Some rights reserved This work is a product of the staff of The World Bank and external contributors. Note that The World Bank does not necessarily own each component of the content included in the work. The World Bank therefore does not warrant that the use of the content contained in the work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. The risk of claims resulting from such infringement rests solely with you. The ndings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this work do not necessarily reect the views of The World Bank, its Board of Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. Nothing herein shall constitute or be considered to be a limitation upon or waiver of the privileges and immunities of The World Bank, all of which are specically reserved. Rights and Permissions

This work is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0) http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/3.0. Under the Creative Commons Attribution license, you are free to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt this work, including for commercial purposes, under the following conditions: AttributionPlease cite the work as follows: Ledgerwood, Joanna, with Julie Earne and Candace Nelson, eds. 2013. The New Micronance Handbook: A Financial Market System Perspective. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/978-0-8213-8927-0. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 TranslationsIf you create a translation of this work, please add the following disclaimer along with the attribution: This translation was not created by The World Bank and should not be considered an official World Bank translation. The World Bank shall not be liable for any content or error in this translation. All queries on rights and licenses should be addressed to the Office of the Publisher, The World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA; fax: 202-522-2625; e-mail: pubrights@worldbank.org.

Chapter 12. Payment Services and Delivery Channels

PART FOUR. INSTITUTIONAL MANAGEMENT FOR SCALE AND SUSTAINABILITY Chapter 14. Monitoring and Managing Financial and Social PerformanceJoanna Ledgerwood, Geraldine OKeeffe, and Ines Arevalo

319 321 351

Chapter 15. Governance and Managing Operations

Peter McConaghy

PART FIVE. SUPPORTING FINANCIAL INCLUSION Chapter 16. Funding

Julie Earne and Lisa Sherk

377 379 413 437 459 479

Chapter 17. Regulation

Kate Lauer and Stefan Staschen

Chapter 18. Infrastructure and Outsourced Support Services

Geraldine OKeeffe, Julie Earne, Joakim Vincze, and Peter McConaghy

Chapter 19. Building Inclusive Financial Markets

David Ferrand

Index

vi

An Overview of The New Micronance Handbook

FOREWORD

When rst published in 1998, Joanna Ledgerwoods Micronance Handbook was an indispensible guide for donors, policy makers, and practitioners who were working to expand access of the poor to micronance.In the intervening years, the opportunities and pressures of commercialization have driven a reassessment of what micronance is and whom it should serve.Today, in addition to building the capacity and ensuring the sustainability of institutions, the larger micronance community is taking a closer look at the diverse needs of clients, the broader nancial ecosystem, and the transformational nature of technology. This reassessment has become a regular xture of global conversations about poverty alleviation. The New Micronance Handbook, then, is timely. The micronance sector now reects the multidisciplinary intersection of nance, technology, and development, where new ideas are changing the art of what is possible.The actors reect this diverse ecosystem and include everything from mobile operators to micronance institutions to community networks.This book has brought an impressive array of the elds experts to an area of practice in constant change. We are pleased that this book asks the hard questions about what people living in poverty really need.This means moving the conversation beyond the walls of institutions and into the complex worlds of clients. The needs of a rural farmer are different from those of an urban microbusiness owner.A young woman embarking on a life after school has different priorities than a mother seeking to protect the assets of her family.For micronance to deliver on its original promises, we need to put the needs of persons living in poverty at the center of this work. It is time for us to take stock of what we have learned as we move forward. The New Micronance Handbook will play an important role, helping us to advance our understanding about how nancial services can serve the diverse needs of the poor. Reeta Roy President and CEO The MasterCard Foundation Tom Kessinger General Manager Aga Khan Foundation

Foreword

PREFACE

Imagine a life without access to nancial services: no deposit account, no debit card, no re insurance, no college savings plan, no home mortgage. Life would be an incredibly stressful roller coaster ride, and most dreams would remain unfullled. The day you get paid for work would be good, the other days rough. Any accident would set your family back. Sending the kids to college? Too difficult. Buying a house? Forget it. Nobody can pay for such needs out of cash accumulated under the mattress. For us, life without access to nancial services is unimaginable. Yet according to 2011 data from the World Bank, an estimated 2.5 billion working-age adults globallymore than half of the total adult populationhave to do exactly that. They live a life without access to the types of nancial services we take for granted. Of course, they cannot do without nancial intermediation, so they rely on age-old, informal mechanisms. They buy livestock as a form of savings; they throw a village feast to cement local ties as insurance against a future family crisis; they pawn jewelry to satisfy urgent liquidity needs; and they turn to a moneylender for credit. These mechanisms are risky and often very expensive. Increasingly robust empirical evidence demonstrates how appropriate nancial services can help to improve household welfare and spur small enterprise activity. Macro evidence also shows that economies with deeper nancial intermediation and better access to nancial services grow faster and have less income inequality. Policy makers and regulators worldwide recognize these connections. They have made nancial inclusionwhere everyone has the choice to access and use the nancial services they need, delivered in a responsible fashiona global development priority. A powerful vision of responsible nancial market development is emerginga vision that aims to bank the other half of the global working-age adult population by leveraging what we have learned from the micronance story to date, using advances in technology to spur product and business model innovation, and encouraging new ways of thinking about how to create an enabling, riskproportionate regulatory and supervisory environment.

An Overview of The New Micronance Handbook

The New Micronance Handbook reects the current frontier of our collective thinking and experience. It starts with the need to understand the demand side. Poor households in the informal economy are producers and consumers. They need access to the full range of nancial services to generate income, build assets, smooth consumption, and manage risks. The global nancial inclusion agenda recognizes these broader needs. It also recognizes the importance of nancial literacy that builds consumer nancial capabilities and of consumer protection regimes that take into account the conditions and constraints of poor families in the informal economy. The Handbook also takes a broad look at the diversity of providers required to meet these needs and at the business model challenges of different products. The original microcredit revolution found an ingenious way to overcome the previous obstacle to providing credit for the poor. How do you manage credit risk and repayments at the local level when working with a segment of the population that has no traditional collateral? The breakthrough was the joint-liability group loan social collateral to allow the poor to pledge for each other. But the business model challenges are different for other nancial services. For small-denomination savings and remittances, transaction costs must be ultralow; for insurance, risks must be pooled and managed at an actuarially relevant scale; for pensions, micro contributions must be invested in ways that generate adequate long-term returns. Continued innovation in products and business models is needed so that we can reach more people with a broader range of products at lower costs. No one type of provider will be able to overcome the very different business model challenges of all products. What is needed instead is a variety of nancial service providers that come together in a local-market ecosystem that works for the poor at the base of the economic pyramid. Lastly, the Handbook takes a fresh look at the enabling infrastructure and regulatory environment. The infrastructure requirements range from a larger number of low-cost, physical access points in harder-to-reach geographic areas to nationwide unique nancial identities that facilitate consumer enrollment and protection. On the regulatory side, policy makers are recognizing that nancial exclusion poses a risk to political stability and impedes economic advancement, and they are increasingly willing to balance the ultimately mutually reinforcing needs for nancial stability, nancial integrity, and nancial inclusion. With a better understanding of demand, ongoing innovation in products and business models to better meet that demand, and recognition of the need for a protective and supportive enabling environment, I believe we have the knowledge and the means to achieve full nancial inclusion in our lifetime. Read on to learn how this is already happening and what more is needed. Tilman Ehrbeck CEO Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP)

Preface

Introduction

Micronance in 2013It has been 15 years since the original Micronance Handbook (Ledgerwood 1998) was written, and much has changed since then. Micronance is now a household term with frequent articles in the media about its growth, innovation, and impact. The industry has grown exponentially, in terms of both the number of clients as well as the number and type of providers and products.1 The focus is no longer only on credit for investment in microenterprises: Today there is broad awareness that poor people have many and diverse nancial service needs, which are typically met by a variety of providers through multiple nancial services. We know this because data have much improved in the past 15 years,2 allowing us to better understand barriers to access and use, and we are beginning to examine impact.3 Over the years, the discourse has shifted from microcredit to micronance,4 and now

widespread concern for nancial inclusion5 is directing attention to the broader nancial ecosystem and how to make nancial markets work better for the poor. For example, a recent CGAP Focus Note looks at the nancial ecosystem within the context of the supply of nancial services: Different products present different risks and delivery challenges, and it is unlikely that a single class of service providers will effectively provide all the products poor people need. A key challenge is how to create the broader interconnected ecosystem of market actors and infrastructure needed for safe and efficient product delivery to the poor (Ehrbeck et al. 2012, p. 1). To this end, policy makers have begun to address nancial inclusion in their economic agendas with the belief that access to nancial services improves the ability of consumers to access markets, which contributes to monetizing the values of products and services, enables risk pooling, and allows value storage, thus affecting

An Overview of The New Micronance Handbook

economic growth and the overall stability of the system. Increasingly, best practice in micronance is responsible nance, dened as the delivery of retail nancial services in a transparent, inclusive, and equitable fashion (BMZ, CGAP, and IFC 2011). Consumer protection and nancial capability are now seen as important policy objectives, particularly in a context of new providers, more sophisticated products, and technology-enabled delivery channels. Recent media attention to the signicant prots made through initial public offerings of micronance banks6 have highlighted the need for transparent pricing and appropriate interest rates. Unlike 15 years ago, funding for micronance today is no longer the purview of donors alone. As of 2011 more than 100 micronance investment vehicles were managing close to US$7 billion (Symbiotics 2011), making private and quasiprivate sector capital readily available. With the recognition that grant funding crowds out the private sector, responsible donors have shifted from providing funds for loan capital and operating subsidies to more of a facilitation role supporting the development of enabling environments, provision of information, and nancial infrastructure. Although signicant investments have been made to reform regulatory systems to accommodate micronance and transform micronance institutions (MFIs) into regulated institutions complete with return-seeking investors, relatively few MFIs can absorb a signicant amount of capital. However, the pool of investment-ready MFIs is small and is not expanding at the speed of the supply of equity investment. Indeed, 52 percent of all foreign debt is channelled to only 25 MFIs, out of a total of 524 MFIs that receive foreign debt nance. At the country level, foreign investment is, to a large degree, still focused on a small number of countries in LAC and ECA7 with only moderate levels of nancial exclusion (Reille et al. 2011, p. 10). Given the concentration of investment in relatively few institutions, the

expected increase in nancial inclusion resulting from the gradual substitution of donor funding with private sector capital has yet to happen. The majority of poor people remain outside the mainstream nancial sector, and many MFIs continue to depend on subsidies. Looking forward, it appears likely that technology will enable customer touch points to proliferate among nontraditional service providers. The technology drivers of nancial inclusion will come from innovations in mobile money, biometric identity systems, smart phones, and wireless broadband Internet access. At the same time, however, much remains to be learned to effectively increase outreach in a substantial way, including, for example, developing appropriate regulatory frameworks for branchless banking models (Alexandre 2010). Further, it is vitally important to better understand the social dimensions of how households manage nancial resources, particularly in the informal sector, and the role of technology to work within these social dynamics (Johnson 2012). Thus, the well-documented and widely applauded achievements of micronance are increasingly coupled with recognition of its limitations and the need to take a more holistic view. Concerns include the following: OutreachIn many countries outreach remains a small percentage of the population; only 41 percent of adults in developing economies report having an account at a formal nancial institution,8 8 percent report having originated a new loan from a formal nancial institution in the past 12 months, and 2 percent report having personally paid for health insurance (Demirg-Kunt and Klapper 2012); more than half the worlds adult population does not use formal or semiformal services, nearly all of whom live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Chaia et al. 2009). SustainabilityAlthough gures are not precise, many micronance operations continue

Introduction

to receive subsidies; commercial funding is highly concentrated in Latin America and Eastern Europe, while most of the worlds poor (less than US$2/day) live in Asia and Africa (Wiesner and Quien 2010). Beyond direct micronance operations, many other activities important in the micronance system (for example, training, product development, and technical advice) are often subsidized. ImpactRecent research based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) has found the impact of microcredit to be mixed. RCTs have shown that increases in consumption and business investment do not always correlate with measures of poverty reduction (ODell 2010). Furthermore, the distribution of gains is uneven. The broader effect of micronance on poverty is limited by low levels of usage and persistent barriers to inclusion (Johnson and Arnold 2011). At the heart of these concerns over the efficacy of micronance is a better understanding of how the poor need and use nancial services. Research (Collins et al. 2009; Demirg-Kunt and Klapper 2012) has revealed that the poor manage their nancial lives with complex strategies that utilize multiple forms of savings, lending, and bartering from a mix of formal and informal providers. Achieving nancial inclusion for the poor thus cannot rely on MFIs alone; rather, it requires improving the quality and frequency of services from a multitude of provider types and fully understanding client behavior and how it affects nancial service needs.

Measuring ProgressAt the time of the original Handbook, a broadly accepted assumption was that increased access and a willingness to pay provided a good proxy for impact.9 Although today we

might challenge this assumption, and are thus beginning to invest much more in assessing impact, if we just look at access gures, how has micronance fared? Despite several decades of signicant investments in the sector, access to or usage of formal nancial services remains low, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (see gure I.1). Data from the World Bank Global Findex database (Demirg-Kunt and Klapper 2012) shows that in SSA only 13 percent of individuals aged 15 years and older saved at a nancial institution in the last 12 months, and only 5 percent received a loan from a nancial institution. Such low usage does not, however, indicate weak demand; at the same time, 19 percent saved in a savings club, and 40percent received a loan from family or friends in the past year. In South Asia gures are similar, with 11 percent saving in a nancial institution in the last 12 months and 9 percent receiving a loan from a nancial institution.10 And yet the massively popular Self-Help Group movement in India counted 97 million households affected by March 31, 2010.11 But even this indication of participation is weak when compared to the potential market of the 900 million households in India that live on less than US$2 a day (Chen et al. 2010). One reason for low outreach is the traditional micronance business model itself, which is based on generating revenue from primarily productive loans and other fee-based services to cover costs. Yet in micronance, costs are high, and the revenue base is relatively low. This is especially true for the rural poor whose limited investment opportunities and capacity for debt translate into lower revenue for MFIs and banks who may lack the incentives, information, and sometimes ability to mitigate perceived risks of operating beyond urban markets or with very poor clients. Thus it is important to focus on lowering costs both for institutions to provide services and for clients to use them. And although technology will continue to push this frontier, access gures alone may offer a misleading view

Other formal non-bank

Informal only

Excluded

Source: FinMark Trust. Note: a. The formal sector is divided into a banked segment (the percentage of adults with a bank account), and a formal other segment (the percentage of the adult population with a formal nancial product, such as insurance or a micronance loan, but no bank account). Together, these two groups are dened as formally included. The informal sector comprises all the organizations that provide nancial services but are not legally registered to do this business, for example, savings clubs, burial societies, and moneylenders. The informally serviced category in the access strand represents the percentage of adults with an informal product but with no bank account or a product from another formal nancial institution. It is necessary to add the informal segment to the formally included segment to derive the percentage of the adult population that is nancially served. Anyone who is not nancially served is nancially excluded, which means they are not using nancial products (formal or informal) to manage their nancial lives; for example, they may simply be using cash. See www.nscope.co.za.

of benets; increased access and more choice do not automatically translate into effective client use. For example, the major growth in access for saving services through the Mzansi account in South Africa disguised a large number of dormant accounts, opened but often unused, because clients either found better options for their needs or were too poor to utilize the account.12 The path from uptake (that is, opening an account) to usage is still an uncharted course. Growth in access, especially if accompanied by access to more diverse services, may require clients with greater nancial capabilities to ensure effective usage and benets. As in any market, if

improvement in access does not develop in a competitive manner, benets may be restricted. Clients with limited information and/or choices may not be able to exert competitive pressure on providers to improve services. Providers and other stakeholders need to take a more proactive approach that recognizes the diversity of barriers to access, the heterogeneity of consumers, and the variety of nancial service needs among various lower income segments and underserved or excluded groups. Looking for major impact from a single product or institution type risks overlooking the inherent complexity of livelihoods and nancial service needs (see box I.1).

Introduction

Box I.1 A Market This Big Needs Many Types of Providers

Back in 1982, when Citi made its rst loan to a nongovernmental organization (NGO), the micronance world was much simpler. There were the few global networks, and we were still using the term microcredit. It was a much more focused, smaller community. The industry has grown tremendously since then. From a few million clients in the 1980s, micronance now reaches more than 190 million families. We have seen tremendous growth in the size of micronance organizations and the scale of their operations, but we are also seeing that there is a price for growing too fastin any industry. You can grow only so fast before burning out the staff, or you cannot bring on well-trained new staff to keep up with your growth. Most of this growth has come from organizations offering only one or two credit products. The demand, the need, and perhaps the model lent itself to consistent growth because it stayed very focused. However, fast growth of organizations using similar models and strategies in the same locations has led, in some cases, to multiple loans to the same borrower and a breakdown of lending discipline. We see these issues in Andhra Pradesh in India where institutions client-base overlaps are putting a lot of pressure on repayments. How do you provide nancial access to the vast majority of the population? It will take more than NGOs and commercial bankswe need cooperatives, credit unions, and postal savings banks. We need cell phone companies that can make loan payments. We see opportunities for many different services and types of providers. In most of the countries where we work, anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of the population is unbanked. This is too big a segment to cover with just one or two approaches and institutional forms. We have the ultrapoor and displaced people at one end of the scale, and the very economically active people who might even be employed on the other end. Their needs are different. I get concerned with some of the arguments that take place in micronance today. It seems like there is an underlying assumption that there is only one type of micronance client and that client should be served by only one type of institutionwhen the opposite is true. There are many different client segments in micronance, and MFIs would do better to focus on each segment to develop the best business models to serve those clients. In the next few years, the innovation needs to be in designing products that t who clients are and what they want to become; we get there by getting to know the clients, their needs, their cash ows and their aspirations much better. Within this micronance ecosystem, we need some institutions to work with the very difcult-to-reach and vulnerable communities, delivering social output of a very high calibre, and they cannot then be devoted just to achieving scale and even full sustainability. Their objective may never be to become a nance company, yet they may use nancial tools as one of the enablers toward progress out of poverty along with health and education training. Even as one part of micronance becomes more commercial, we have to keep thinking about the many vulnerable, underserved, complicated communities that mainstream micronance may not yet be able to reach.

An Overview of The New Micronance Handbook

Redening ObjectivesAt the time of writing the original Handbook, the predominant micronance model was an NGO MFI providing credit to microentrepreneurs for investment in microenterprises. This model was largely based on the belief that access to credit for productive investment would support entrepreneurship and economic development, empower women, and alleviate poverty by generating higher incomes and employment. However, increasing evidence of the impact of micronance, particularly microcredit, indicates that it has some effect on the expansion of business and increased prots, very little effect on womens empowerment, and virtually no effect on poverty alleviation (ODell 2010). Fifteen years later, the shift to nancially inclusive systems, based in part on better understanding impact, appropriately broadens the objectives beyond economic development and poverty alleviation to include the ability of poor women and men to better manage risks, smooth income, invest in productive activities, and build assets. These broader objectives demand more of stakeholders in terms of better understanding clients and, in turn, delivering an improved value

proposition (see box I.2). While the language changed with insights and expanded horizons, the underlying fundamental idea has remained the same: Help poor families in the informal economy realize their economic potential and give them the nancial services means to manage their lives that most of us in the North take for granted (Ehrbeck 2012). Greater nancial inclusion thus requires addressing constraints and taking advantage of opportunities in the nancial ecosystem. Stakeholders are now beginning to focus on the diversity of clients (geography, income levels, livelihoods, gender, life-cycle) and their needs (growth, cash management, risk mitigation), as well as the wide range of nancial services (credit, savings, payments, insurance), nancial service providers (informal, MFIs, cooperatives, banks, insurance companies), and delivery channels (branches, agents, mobile phones) to meet these needs. They are paying attention to the effectiveness (social performance/impact, transparency, and client protection) of nancial services as well as the knowledge and skills that clients need to use them (nancial capabilities); the rules that guide nancial markets (regulations, standards, norms); the nancial infrastructure (payment

Box I.2 Latest Findings from Randomized Evaluations of Micronance

The overall message from this body of work is that poor people face various limits, and their ability to capitalize on opportunities varies greatly. [N]ot all borrowers want to grow a business. The variable results seen can be as much a function of borrower intent as borrower ability. A one-size-ts-all product will not bring benet to the borrowers or prot to the providers. Instead, the micronance industry needs to continue to mature in waysSource: Bauchet et al. 2011.

that allow it to view poor customers as individuals. Some of those individuals will leverage nancial services to smooth consumption; some to manage risk; some to make investments they have the skill and resources to prot from; some will do all of the above. With a view of serving all of these needs, micronance providers may evolve a new generation of improved services and products that reliably and exibly help poor people.

Introduction

systems and credit bureaus) required to support well-functioning markets; and the information services necessary to inform all stakeholders to better improve the system. This book attempts to address all of these issues with the objective to promote nancially inclusive ecosystems that work better for the poor.

About This Book

Given the importance of both understanding and appreciating the complexities of nancial services for the poor, the New Micronance Handbook takes a different approach from its predecessor. In contrast to the institutional perspective (supply side) of the original Handbook, this book considers rst and foremost clients and their needs (demand side) and how the market system can work better to meet these needs. It also attempts to address the rules and supporting functions required for nancial markets to work well and serve ever greater numbers of poor consumers. The result is a book that is less of a how-to guide but rather a description of the nancial market system and the functions within it and how they work, or do not work, in serving the needs of the poor. The objective is to provide a strategic guide to help assess the varied nancial service needs of poor people, and to then propose how a diversied nancial sector can address these needs in an accessible and benecial manner. Ultimately it is hoped the book will contribute to greater access to and usage of nancial products and services that genuinely meet the many needs of the poor through various sustainable market-based nancial service providers. The New Micronance Handbook provides a primer on nancial services for the poor. It is written for a wide audience, including practitioners, facilitators, policy makers, regulators, investors, and donors working to improve the nancial system, but who are relatively new to the sector. It will also be useful for telecommunication companies and other support service

providers, students and academics, and consultants and trainers. Although this book is in part an update of the original Handbook, the growth of the sector and the complexity of the nancial market system have led to a perspective much broader than the previous nancial and institutional perspective. As a result, additional chapters have been added to address issues more relevant than when the original Handbook was written. To reect this complexity, we invited a number of experts to write many of the new chapters. In addition, given that this book does not go into as much detail as the previous book did, a list of key resources at the end of each chapter provides readers additional information on specic topics. Finally, although the title still uses the term micronance, the book very much addresses the wider nancial ecosystem, moving beyond the traditional meaning of micronance to inclusive nancial systems.

Book Structure and Content

The New Micronance Handbook loosely follows the framework of the original Handbook and is organized into ve parts: Part I: Understanding Demand Financial Ecosystem and the

Part II: Financial Service Providers Part III: Financial Services and Delivery Channels Part IV: Institutional Management for Scale and Sustainability Part V: Supporting Financial Inclusion Part IUnderstanding Demand and the Financial Ecosystem updates Part I of the original Handbook and addresses big picture issuesthe nancial landscape, clients, and strategies to achieve and measure nancial inclusion. Given the changing landscape of the nancial services sector, the book opens with Chapter 1The

10

An Overview of The New Micronance Handbook

Evolving Financial Landscape, written by Joanna Ledgerwood and Alan Gibson, outlining three key inuences in nancial services for the poor that are greatly affecting the way the sector is moving: a renewed focus on clients, acknowledgment of the wider nancial ecosystem, and the potential of technology. Chapter 2Clients builds on the centrality of clients and nancial management. Drawing from Portfolios of the Poor (Collins et al. 2009), authors Stuart Rutherford, Daryl Collins, and Susan Johnson examine the nancial service needs of poor people and how these needs are met. Chapter 3The Role of Government and Industry in Financial Inclusion, written by Stefan Staschen and Candace Nelson, addresses how key players promote nancial inclusion, from the role of government as policy maker and legislator, to industry as it warms to responsible nance through self-regulation and the need for coordination. Chapter 4The Role of Donors in Financial Inclusion, written by Mayada El-Zogbhi and Barbara Ghwiler, focuses on the changing role of donors in micronance and proposes ways to facilitate the market to work better for the poor. Given that nancial inclusion is on the agenda of many policy makers, much attention has recently been invested in measuring it and assessing the impact of using nancial services. Supply and demand-side studies, impact assessment, and other rigorous research are addressed by Joanna Ledgerwood in Chapter 5Measuring Financial Inclusion and Assessing Impact. Part IIFinancial Service Providers updates the original chapter 4 (The Institution), adding an additional chapter to acknowledge the numerous and varied providers in the informal sector. Chapter 6Community-Based Providers, written by Candace Nelson, describes indigenous informal providers, for example, moneylenders, deposit collectors, rotating savings and credit associations and mutual aid groups such as burial societies, and other providers such as Self-Help Groups and Savings Groups that are facilitated by external agencies. Chapter 7Institutional

Providers, written by Joanna Ledgerwood, describes nancial service providers that are more formal in nature. This grouping includes a wide variation of provider types, differing in the services they provide as well as their ownership structures, regulatory status, geographic focus, target markets, and objectives, but are similar in that they have a more concrete structure than providers in the informal sector and are thus referred to as institutions. Parts I and II are the least technical parts of the handbook; they require no formal background in micronance or nancial theory. They will be of most interest to donors, policy makers, students, and those interested in understanding nancial inclusion and the actors involved. Part IIIFinancial Services and Delivery Channels expands on the original Handbooks discussion of savings and credit with new chapters on agricultural nance, insurance, and payment services. It also addresses the many alternative channels that are beginning to show promise and includes a thought provoking chapter on supporting the poor through nancial planning tools. Chapter 8Savings Services, written by Joanna Ledgerwood, considers the various savings products demanded by the poor and touches on the institutional capacity required to offer deposit services. Chapter 9Credit, written by Joanna Ledgerwood and Julie Earne, looks at pricing loans and types of credit products including traditional working capital and xed asset loans, as well as newer products such as housing loans and leasing. Chapter 10Agricultural Finance, written by Calvin Miller, acknowledges the substantial need for nancial services for people working in the agricultural sector (the vast majority of the poor) and the ways in which nancial products and delivery channels cater to meet these needs. Although in the original Handbook insurance was only briey mentioned, in this edition, given the growing importance of microinsurance in nancial inclusion and acknowledgment of the risk management needs of poor

Introduction

11

women and men, Chapter 11Insurance, written by Craig Churchill, looks at the demand for microinsurance, product characteristics, and delivery mechanisms. Chapter 12Payment Services and Delivery Channels, written by Joyce Lehman and Joanna Ledgerwood, describes transaction services such as money transfers and payments as products in and of themselves, as well as the various channels for delivering nancial services. In particular, this chapter considers the different ways in which clients access services through branchless touch points and the signicant role played by agent networks. Chapter 13Beyond Products, written by Ignacio Mas, proposes the delivery of nancial products as an integrated customer experience through mobile phones. Part III will be of most interest to practitioners who are developing, modifying, or rening their nancial products, as well as donors or consultants who are evaluating nancial services for the poor and want to better understand nancial products and services and ways to deliver them. Part IVInstitutional Management for Scale and Sustainability includes two chapters and provides an update of the original chapters on MFI management. Chapter 14Monitoring and Managing Financial and Social Performance, written by Joanna Ledgerwood, Geraldine OKeeffe, and Ines Arevalo, addresses core banking systems and nancial and social performance management. Chapter 15Governance and Managing Operations, written by Peter McConaghy, looks at various facets of institutional providers including governance, human resource management, product management, and risk management. Part IV is more technical than previous parts of the Handbook. Although specic institutional performance is somewhat less important given the client and nancial system focus of this book, Part IV is included for the benet of practitioners and/or funders interested in the operations and performance of institutions providing nancial services to the poor.

Part VSupporting Financial Inclusion is new and includes four chapters that focus on the roles and functions of various stakeholders supporting and promoting the overall nancial ecosystem. Chapter 16Funding, written by Julie Earne and Lisa Sherk, considers the signicant role investors play in providing capital to nancial service providers. Given the growth in the number and diversity of providers, Chapter 17 Regulation, written by Kate Lauer and Stefan Staschen, addresses the laws and regulatory frameworks in place to support proper oversight and safety of the nancial market system and the various players. Chapter 18Infrastructure, written by Geraldine OKeeffe, Julie Earne, Joakim Vincze, and Peter McConaghy, considers the supporting functions required for well-functioning nancial markets such as credit bureaus, deposit insurance, clearing and settlement systems, and unique identication systems. Outsourced services such as software as a service, training, and security are also described. Chapter 19Building Inclusive Financial Markets, written by David Ferrand, uses the market system framework to discuss the roles development agencies can and should play to contribute to nancial systems that work more effectively for the poor, highlighting the different functions of market actors (service providers with ongoing roles) and those facilitating the market (donors and other development agencies with a temporary role). Part V will be of most interest to those either providing or supporting the development of mesolevel functions in the nancial ecosystem.

Notes1. Total numbers are difficult to nd, but David Roodman in Due DiligenceAn Impertinent Enquiry into Micronance (2011, p. 67) estimates there were close to 180 million loans outstanding and 1.3 billion savings accounts at alternative nancial institutions in 2000 and micronance has grown a lot since then.

12

An Overview of The New Micronance Handbook

2. For example, national-level FinMark Trusts FinScope surveys, www.nmark.org.za, and Global Findex databases, http://data.worldbank .org/data-catalog/nancial_inclusion. 3. For example, see Financial Access Initiative (FAI), http://nancialaccess.org; Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-Pal), http:// www.povertyactionlab.org/about-j-pal; and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), http:// poverty-action.org. 4. Micronance as dened by CGAP in CGAP Occasional Paper 15, The New Moneylenders: Are the Poor Being Exploited by High Microcredit Interest Rates? (Rosenberg et al. 2009), usually refers to the provision of nancial services to poor and low-income clients who have little or no access to conventional banks. The term is often used in a more specic sense, referring to institutions that use new techniques developed over the past 30 years to deliver microcredittiny loansto informal microentrepreneurs. The range of services can include not only microcredit but also savings, insurance, and money transfers. 5. The ACCION Center for Financial Inclusion denes nancial inclusion as Full nancial inclusion is a state in which all people who can use them have access to a full suite of quality nancial services, provided at affordable prices in a convenient manner, and with dignity for the clients. Financial services are delivered by a range of providers, most of them private, and reach everyone who can use them, including disabled, poor and rural populations (www .centerfornancialinclusion.org). 6. See http://www.economist.com/node/ 11376809 for information on the Compartamos Banco IPO. 7. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and Europe Central Asia (ECA). 8. Dened as a bank, credit union, cooperative, post office, or micronance institution (Demirg-Kunt and Klapper 2012). 9. In chapter 2 of the Micronance Handbook (Ledgerwood 1998, p. 49) Tom Dichter wrote, Doing impact analysis well (and therefore

credibly) can be difficult and expensive. Addressing this dilemma, there is a school of thinking that advocates certain proxies for impact. Otero and Rhyne have summarized recent micronance history by saying that there has been an important shift from focusing on the individual rm or client of nancial services to focusing on the institutions providing services. This nancial systems approach necessarily relaxes its attention to impact in terms of measurable enterprise growth and focuses instead on measures of increased access to nancial services (Otero and Rhyne 1994). 10. Account at a formal nancial institution denotes the percentage of respondents with an account (self or together with someone else) at a bank, credit union, another nancial institution (for example, cooperative or micronance institution), or the post office (if applicable) including respondents who reported having a debit card (Demirg-Kunt and Klapper 2012). 11. www.shgportal.com. 12. E-mail exchange with Gerhard Coetzee, April 4, 2012, and Bankable Frontiers Associates (2009).

An Overview of The New Micronance Handbook

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The original Microfinance Handbook provided a very useful guide for practitioners and students of development finance. Since that book was published in 1998, there have been concentrated efforts to broaden outreach to meet the diverse financial service needs of clients. The New Microfinance Handbook brings together leading industry thinkers and organizes their ideas into a concise reference for all development finance stakeholders. The book methodically outlines all the considerations for increasing financial inclusion, with a particular focus on understanding the needs of poor households.

We have used the original Microfinance Handbook for years as a core text for our training programs, and this second edition is even more complete. Joanna and the authors have done a thorough updating of all the sections. Its new sections reflect the progress in the field, moving beyond credit and savings into microinsurance, money transfers, and payments systems. The Handbook continues to be the best single source compendium on the how to of financial services for the poor, and I recommend it highly. Robert Peck Christen, President, Boulder Institute of Microfinance, and Professor of Practice, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University In the midst of all the jargon about financial inclusion and financial ecosystems, it is very helpful to have a clear and thoughtful description of the various pieces, and of how they fit together, as a basis of understanding and of action. The New Microfinance Handbook provides this basis. The new edition shows how far systemic thinking about the role of microfinance in the financial system has come. David Porteous, Managing Director, Bankable Frontier Associates Microfinance has experienced a wave of new thinking in the past decade, with a sharpened focus on the financial needs of households rather than only enterprises. The New Microfinance Handbook introduces readers to the most important ideas and shows how these ideas can be turned into action. If you work in microfinance, this book should be high on your reading list. Jonathan Morduch, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, New York University, and co-editor of Banking the World: Empirical Foundations of Financial Inclusion This is a book that will become an important part of the history of finance. The New Microfinance Handbook documents and analyzes the extensive expansion and depth of our knowledge of demanddriven products and services, and of our understanding of the institutions that make these work. Discussions of recent advances, innovations, and breakthroughs in the industry include the importance of enabling environments; results from new research on supply and demand; the experiences of, and huge potential for, mobile banking; and many others. Written for a wide audience on a crucial topic affecting most of the people in the world, this book is both profound and enjoyable. Marguerite S. Robinson, author of The Microfinance Revolution